#but they get pegged as trans women if they do anything GNC

[asterofthedeepforest]

sometimes bein a gnc trans man, or just trans man in general, is so annoying

one one side u get people whos only exposure to trtans people is seeing trans women online and think THOSE are trans men, so theyre all like "erm, but ur a woman tho??? how can u be trans????"

and on the other u get people who thinku either have no struggles as a trans man or u suddenly get patriarchy rights bc man

or theres the third secret side if ur gnc where people think ur just lying or fetishizing trans men lmao

ALSO trans men dont get good memes bc as soon as people see the word man they wanna clown on it to knock men down a peg or w/e ughhhhhhh

edit: ALSO ALSO u have to super specify ur a trans man or anything u do thats queer online, like art n such, will be viewed thru the lense of 'this was made by a cis man so its gross'

[doberbutts]

What do you think about the term transmisogyny exempt (tme)?

In honesty it's a New Term for me because I do not engage with the majority of the trans community online, and thus only learned about it just halfway through May. Admittedly my understanding is still fairly minimal and I do not claim to 100% Get It, but...

From my understanding, it rebrands transmisogyny to only apply to trans women and transfems, and thus those who are trans men and transmasc are somehow "exempt" from transmisogyny.

This is a really bizarre way of thinking for me. People who are transmasc are not exempt from being affected by misogyny, nor are they exempt from the specific form of transmisogyny that transfems are subjected to. In fact, I can recall a relatively recent gross interaction with a chaser/fetishist that specifically was talking to me because he thought I was a trans woman and did not understand the difference between trans men and trans women. I had to explain to him several times before he finally got it, and then he expressed that he thought I was really gross for "wanting to be a homo". WTF, dude. You're just as obsessed with sucking cock as I am, just because you're straight for wanting a woman's penis does not mean I'm wrong for wanting a man's, but okay I guess.

Trans men may not be killed at the same rates of trans women, but that is because trans women are hypervisible (which is not great) and trans men are invisible (which is also not great)- meaning when someone "clocks" a trans man they usually think he is either a trans woman or a butch lesbian, and comes under fire for that assumption because it's not like those identities are safe at all in larger society either. Trans men are still killed for being trans, as well as subjected to beatings and rapes and homelessness and drug addiction and more, for similar and yet different reasons that trans women are.

In other words, I think all transgender identities are more alike than they are different, and I think pitting ourselves against each other to try and claim that one is more oppressed than the other will get us no where. I think recognizing that we all come under fire because of our gender expression and that while these things may affect us in different ways, the problem is not that one identity or gender has "more danger" than the other, but that these problems manifest in different ways because we still live in a very gendered society and are marginalized from the getgo.

Caitlyn Jenner may not be TME due to being a trans woman, and I may be TME due to being a trans man, but she has more privilege in this world than I will ever have, while still having a target on her back due to the simple fact that she is a trans woman. I don't think it's fair to erase others' struggles and oppression simply because one group's problems are more visible than the others'.

Additionally, transmisogyny was coined to include both binary genders and nonbinary genders and how it was misogyny and the closeness to women that fueled violent acts of transphobia. The idea being that trans men are women, trans women are men who want to be women, and nonbinary people are a mix of soyboys and confused tomboys, and thus it's all bad because it all relates back to women in the end, and thus our fellowship in misery because the world cannot accept that we are what we say we are.

At some point, there was a gear shift, and transmisogyny was put fully on trans women and transfems, which entirely erased trans men and transmascs from the discussion. If I were to hedge a bet on exact timing, I would say likely whenever the idea that all men including marginalized men are bad also spread, and trans men and transmascs began to be attacked and forced back into the closet and made to feel ashamed for being male or male-adjacent. This is also about when the argument to use the words transmisandry or transandrophobia came about, to differentiate the struggles between the two "sides".

As an aside I really wonder where peopble who are gender neutral or agender get sorted in this discussion, and whether those nonbinary who do not claim "transmasc" and "transfem" as a term to describe themselves feel similar or different regarding this discussion. I have always been very binary so I really can't tell you, but I do find that these discussions tend to leave this group out to argue on a gender binary level.

[catboyfeli]

the past few days i’ve been experiencing so much confusion and dysphoria towards the concept of nonbinary itself, and i think that’s part of why i used to oppose it??

it’s just?? i’m autistic so i take everything literally, so if someone identifies as their agab, but not the gender roles assigned to it, would they be nonbinary? what even is gender to most people?

i’m so loving towards queer cishets because, although i’m not cishet, queer attraction to men as a woman is a big part of my identity, and everyone has different interpretations of what gender is, so if someone experiences their gender as queer, but still identifies as it, wouldn’t they be lgbtq?

like, if a cishet man identifies as male, but does not conform to the male gender role, expresses himself femininely, experiences a disconnect from the male social role, and experiences attraction exclusively to women (or those who present as women), but in a way that isn’t the same as typical cishet men, would he be considered nonbinary or genderqueer?

people go on and on about self identity always being valid, but the second someone identifies as cishet and queer, they act like it’s contradictory. but heterosexual attraction and straight attraction aren’t the same thing?

people say lgbtq means anyone who isn’t cishet, but also talks about how cis individuals may identify as genderqueer, or something similar, to describe their connection to gender roles and social roles. so by that logic, someone can identify as cis + het and queer without it being contradictory.

it’s been on my mind a lot lately and makes me feel like bursting into tears because it’s so overwhelming and confusing and i hate how exclusionary and hateful the community as a whole is.

i just? i have one character i’m kin with, that goes beyond just having them as a character i relate to or find comfort in. he’s a cis man, but very feminine, doesn’t conform to the male social role in the slightest, attracted almost exclusively to women with a rare exception here and there for other feminine men, identifies as male but not with the male social or gender roles

i know it probably sounds silly to most people but for me, this kin majorly affects my identity and so often i just wonder? is he cis? is he nonbinary? i don’t fucking know??? sometimes people say nonbinary and genderqueer can also refer to one’s gender expression, and yeah, this character’s gender expression is 100% nonbinary. he doesn’t “act” like a man whatsoever and identifies more with women than with men, but still identifies as a man.

anyway the big problem is that i roleplay this character, and whenever i think about the fact that people would assume a straight man or lesbian wouldn’t be attracted to him, it makes me feel incredibly dysphoric, because like?? ok he’s male but he doesn’t behave or present male whatsoever, so yeah, some straight men and lesbians COULD be attracted to him because attraction goes far beyond gender identity and is affected more by gender expression than anything else

so this whole thing just makes me feel confused and dysphoric and i’m about to start my period so i’ve been real emotional and disassociative lately which makes me hyperfixate on this and it’s so UGHGHHGGHh.

it’s just so difficult to explain my feelings, beliefs, and experiences to others and it makes me so frustrated and upset.

i just wish? the community would come up with something to refer to actual non lgbtq people? instead of using cishet as a catch-all because it’s really not? someone who’s cis and het can still be queer in their experience with gender and sexuality, and although i’m neither, i’m still supportive due to my past confusion with all of this and knowing what i experienced was queer, but at that time, feeling as if cis and heterosexual best described me.

and plus now even if i was cis and het, my attraction to men and experience with gender would still be queer, regardless of my personal identity or attraction (or lack of) to women.

most of society sees gender as either male or female, depending on your sex or which one you want to transition to, and how you behave and present yourself is independent of your gender. which makes sense, but now i don’t know what i believe and it’s all so fucking confusing and some aspects of nonbinary enforce gender norms and others demolish it and it confuses and distresses the hell out of me

i just wish i had one person who understood my way of thinking, then i’d feel less alone and crazy, because like? a woman who presents as male can still conform to the female social role? gender expression refers to more than just presentation, and a woman who presents as female can not conform to the female social role. is that considered nonbinary or genderqueer? is that why people think i’m crazy for being supportive of queer cishets? is a person who identifies as their agab but has queer gender expression considered nonbinary or genderqueer? have i just been taking this “identity” thing too literally?

are gender and gender roles considered the same thing? because yeah, they are just about the same thing, but is that how other people view it?

typing this whole thing has helped a little with my thoughts but i still feel distressed and dysphoric as hell. i’m nonbinary, but still have a strong attachment to being female due to, you know, growing up as female and mostly conforming to the female social role, so seeing all this hate towards cishets makes me, by association, feel like shit, and seeing people constantly assume heterosexual attraction conforms to binary gender roles, makes me feel invalidated, invisible, and dysphoric. me being kin with a very gnc male character, who also experiences queer heterosexual attraction, makes it hurt even more and increases my distress and dysphoria.

like on tiktok? i saw some jerk say how “straight people shouldn’t use top/bottom” like??? first of all trans people?? second of all PEGGING?? like i said, i still feel strongly attached to being female, so this made me feel like garbage.

does the community consider those who do not conform to gender expectations as nonbinary or genderqueer? is cis used to refer to those who identify as their agab AND the gender and social roles that go along with it? am i the one who’s out of the loop?

feminine gay men (more specifically, mlm) are normalized in lgbtq spaces, but feminine straight and bi men when it comes to m/f attraction, aren’t, and are inherently assumed to conform to the male social norms. same with women, obviously, but i feel like it’s slightly more accepted with women.

even in bisexual spaces, m/m and f/f relationships are considered ‘superior,’ and m/f relationships are always assumed to conform to gender roles. by the lgbtq community, as well. people think m/f and het mean heteronormative, gender binary conforming. but it doesn’t. is there any sort of term or community for those who don’t conform to this? i’ve been meaning to make my own but i’d really rather not because i just don’t have the energy.

this is what i’m always talking about. this is why i thought so strongly i was just a cis girl that didn’t conform to the female social role. is my understanding of things just off? is being gnc considered genderqueer by default? and when i say gnc, i don’t mean a man who wears dresses or something, i mean men and women who don’t conform to the gender roles assigned to them because it’s who they are inside, not to make a political statement or whatever. i’m not gnc or nonbinary to make a political statement, i am because that’s just who i am.

anyway if i could just be a normal cis girl who isn’t exclusively attracted to femme men that’d be fucking amazing. sometimes i wish i was just a trans guy but even then i feel like i wouldn’t be completely happy since i’m just Not attracted to gender conforming men in the slightest. and yes, i’m bisexual, but lately it’s so rare that i’m attracted to women and when it comes to men, i’m exclusively attracted to femme men, not exclusively attracted to men as a whole.

so often i get jealous of trans men, gay men, and lesbians, and then i feel like an asshole because i shouldn’t be jealous but i am and i just wish i was one of them and not a fucking freak that doesn’t seem to fit any label or community properly. like my gay trans friend? i’m so jealous of him and i feel like an asshole. he has so much community and i have? nobody. i wish i was like him. i don’t know anyone who understands my attraction to exclusively femme men, and especially not girls who understand it. for a long time, you know, despite me feeling drawn towards the nonbinary label, i thought my lack of community of other women who understood how i felt and lack of representation, was why I felt that way, and I thus brushed it off as me being cis and confused.

knowing tumblr, someone’s going to see this and make fun of me or invalidate my feelings, as fucking always, so i don’t even know why i’m posting this. i just have nowhere else i can put it.

[butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker]

Incidentally, I think there's a queer reading of Crowley sorely missing.

My husband has a joke about young Crowley going to his priest for help with his homosexual urges, and the priest explaining that it was a demon. And Crowley being "...ok well let's try talking to it" and lo! A magus was born.

I actually think there's more to it. Sex magic is part of what makes Crowley a lurid figure, buuuut...the interpretations people have of this are very, very hetero; just as the imagery of Baphomet has become a hyper-masc goat towering over a fragile pulp fiction cover naked witch babe.

But Baphomet is a bigendered figure, even if occult artists all too frequently choose not to draw the boobs, and choose not to draw Baphomet as a kind of woman instead of a kind of man. From the earliest sources in 20th century western occult tradition, magic and mages are defined as a combination of masculine and feminine energy in a single body. *Not* a Gardnerian or Dianic concept of male and female magic residing separately on male and female people. To work magic, the magus must become both symbolically male and symbolically female.

George Ives, one of the earliest British gay rights apologists described himself as "the soul of a woman in the body of a man". That was very much the science/politics of the day, a concept of inverts or uranians. Inverts were a group of people we would now recognise as gay or bi, or trans, or gender non conforming (including people who were simply GNC for the era, like women who didn't want to marry), all in one messy concept of "the genderwrongs". And as early lgbt people were hungry for any scrap of data they could find about themselves, a lot of people adopted this into their self-concept where we would now likely see these things as different.

Anyway, I think that when Crowley joined the Golden Dawn & encountered the concept of mages being both male and female, he related it to what Ives & Ulrichs and others were saying about queer men. Specifically, I want to quote Alan Moore on this from his educational comic Promethea: "the mage seeks to penetrate the mystery; but on finding it, becomes the mystery that is to be penetrated". I think this concept reads very, very differently to a queer person than it does to a straight one. The Golden Dawn's conception of sacred sexuality was drawn from the alchemical idea of the sacred marriage of the Sun and Moon, and used the imagery of a lance dipped into the holy grail; later adopted into Wicca as the knife dipped into the chalice.

In short, what Moore et al is saying is "mages are symbolically both male and female, though in practice their ritual role is one or the other as appropriate to their actual birth gender obvs, especially if anything sexual is happening." Whereas Crowley's reading is..."men can be either the penetrative or receptive partner in sex, and this fits with what Ives is saying about queer men being both male and female, and with what the Golden Dawn is saying about mages being both male and female. And if both parts of penetration constitute a magical act, then that isn't heterosexual: a mage both gives and receives, and that's the true pathway to sacred sexuality".

he's such an inveterate tinkerers that I'm pretty confident he also made the intuitive leap that gay sex, straight sex and lesbian sex would all have differing magical results. I also want to highlight that Thelema, while a bit dickish in the hands of your average straight Crowley fanboy, is 100% the religious tradition a closeted Victorian would develop for his own psychological survival: "everyone has a true desire in them and it is right for that person to express their desires, even if they desire something wrong"

I feel like the queer context for Crowley is almost entirely missing. Like, as the "wickedest man in Europe", the incarnation of the Beast, many people will know he spent an opium-fuelled month in bed with his boyfriend in Paris doing sex magic. That's part of his bad boy image. I think people are less capable of taking Crowley seriously as an actual queer human being, and understanding how deeply queer his religious philosophy is. I think his magical techniques and ideas are decontextualised a lot by people who don't get this (like, straight people who misunderstand "do what thou wilt will be the whole of the law" as "it's ok to be an asshole" rather than "don't be a drag, just be a queen, because baby you were born this way"). I think the way gendered magic ultimately developed in the 20th c was detrimental to queer people, who then had to reinvent their place in Wicca and in the ceremonial occult. When we've always been there, and Crowley's life, work and magic makes us not the sidenote, but the central magic practitioners who are most fully able to embody the work of the mage

tldr: pity Mathers wasn't into being pegged.

[patricianandclerk]

Angua and Cheeri (you can skip the hotness question of course)

SEND ME A CHARACTER & I’LL ANSWER THE FOLLOWING ABOUT THEM!

Angua von Uberwald

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

best quality: I think Angua’s best quality is her like... Loyalty and care and attention to detail? These things are all wrapped up into one thing for me, but the fact that she went from being an unwilling princess in an awful place to just... Being a normal girl taken up with a (secret) prince, and caring so much about everybody, making up for where she came from? Trying so hard to make other people’s lives better? Connecting with others? Big respect.

worst quality: I think her... lack of self-respect. Not the low self-esteem, which is one thing, but the fact that she really has so little regard for herself, and thinks of herself as so unimportant, and so like... resigned to that, you know? Especially like, when she’s like, “ugh, we’re all someone’s dog” kind of language, like... That’s what she thinks she deserves, to be almost subservient to another person? And that makes me pang big time. 

ship them with: Sally!!! I love Sally/Angua just because like... Sally would work so hard to get Angua out of her shell a little bit, but the thing is, Sally is so good at challenging Angua’s self-flagellating behaviour, as much as Angua is good at bringing Sally down a peg? They really balance one another out in that respect, and the thing I love is how much that comes from a place of care for one another, even before that care is really personalised. 

brotp them with: Big time Cheri!! And also, of course, Carrot. And the thing is... Sam is her da, and I love it. 

needs to stay away from: Her own inner demons. 

misc. thoughts: I really love Angua’s relationship with Vimes, and how much she looks up to him. The wonderful thing to me is how much they have in common in terms of like... How worthless they both think they are, but how they set aside those anxieties in order to focus on other people? I love them. 

Cheri Littlebottom

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

best quality: Um, that she’s a gender-nonconforming ICON? Like, I’m sorry, but Cheri Littlebottom fucking invented bravery, and she’s so incredible, like!! She did that! She got herself some fucking skirts, some dresses! She said fuck the patriarchy! I’m a woman now, bite me! 

Biggest respect for Cheri Littlebottom. She’s so incredible. That willingness to spit in the eye of everyone else’s agenda aside, I also love how like... She doesn’t know shit about anything, and she’ll just admit to it. I love how she’ll ask basic questions and in front of you just fucking take notes on your answer. That’s a bravery in itself, and I’m not joking about that, I’m not taking the piss - she’s not frightened of looking ignorant or looking stupid, because she’s here and she cares and she’s willing to learn, and I love that. 

worst quality: I think her worst quality is like... I think that sometimes, she kind of resigns herself to... not even bad treatment, but just unluckiness, you know? I think that sometimes she’s just a little shy and uncertain, and I think that sometimes she worries about taking up space - she worries about asking the world for too much, for more than she deserves, but she does deserve it!!

ship them with: I don’t think I have any ship partners for Cheri particularly? I just want her to be... happy. 

brotp them with: Angua, big time, and absolutely the City Watch Igor! I also really love her dynamic with A.E. Pessimal. 

needs to stay away from: Dickholes in the dwarfish community. 

misc. thoughts: I write her name as Cheri because like... So, Cheri - and other dwarfs who are out as women and decide to present in any sort of GNC way - is an allegory for the trans experience. Yes, it’s different and coming from a different culture, but it came out of care and focus, and subsequently like.

I don’t really like seeing people style her name as Cheery, personally, because we know that she prefers to style it as Cheri, and that’s also what she wants to be called? So because it’s that trans-parallel experience, that’s what I do.